{"id":440,"date":"2020-02-02T09:16:33","date_gmt":"2020-02-02T16:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/?p=440"},"modified":"2021-07-09T18:06:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-10T00:06:31","slug":"whirligig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/whirligig\/","title":{"rendered":"Novels Worth Teaching: Whirligig by Paul Fleischman"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Whirligig<\/span><\/i><\/a> by Paul Fleischman<\/a> definitely qualifies as a novel worth teaching.\u00a0 It is a slim, yet powerful, unassuming, yet life-changing, novel about mistakes, restitution, and forgiveness by others and of ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Synopsis<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Brent, a teen whose parents don\u2019t seem to care and who is new to his school, goes to a party one night.\u00a0 In a series of bad choices and embarrassments, Brent ends up drinking too much.\u00a0 After a final humiliation, he leaves the party, drives drunk, and in an attempt to kill himself by running into the barrier on the freeway, he ends up surviving but killing another young woman, Lea.<\/span><\/p>

In the aftermath, the mother of Lea asks that Brent build 4 whirligigs in honor of her daughter In the four corners of the United States.\u00a0 And Brent starts his journey. <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Five chapters follow Brent\u2019s story of his travels, building the whirligigs, and finding himself along the way.\u00a0 The other four chapters are four vignettes that center around other people who encounter Brent\u2019s whirligigs and how the whirligigs impact their lives, even in small ways.<\/span><\/p>

Fleischman has beautifully tied together these stories of self-discovery and change to mirror Brent\u2019s story.<\/span><\/p>

In the realm of young adult literature, this has the usual storyline: teen, absent parents, journey on his own, and self-discovery.\u00a0 But it is so much more than that. I\u2019ve taught this novel 4 times and each time it touched me and my students each and every time.\u00a0 The quotes you see in this post are <\/span>quotes from the novel<\/span><\/a> my students pulled out as being significant to them.<\/span><\/p>

Clocking in at around 133 pages and 9 chapters, it can easily be read in class or because it is interesting, it can be read at home.\u00a0 Because there is so much to digest and talk about in the subtleties, I have always read this with students in-class.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Ways of Reading Whirligig<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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I\u2019ve read this book in many ways.\u00a0 <\/span>You can find my entire unit on TPT<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 But I have also experimented with teaching it out of order in the following ways:<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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1. Teach it in the order it was written.<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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You encounter the whirligigs in a different order than you do in Brent\u2019s story, but the theme and thread of the novel remain intact.<\/span><\/p>

My students always struggled when we got to the first vignette because Brent hasn\u2019t even made a whirligig yet, nor do we know that is what Lea\u2019s mother asks him to do.\u00a0 In fact, we don\u2019t even know that he has killed another person in his suicide attempt.\u00a0 The first time teaching the novel this way, I didn\u2019t let my students \u201cin\u201d on the secret and they really struggled with this transition.\u00a0 The second time, I told them what was going on.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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2. Teach the novel in parts.<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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First, read Brent\u2019s whole story (chapters 1, 3, 5, 7, 9), then read about the whirligigs (chapters 2, 4, 6, 8).<\/span><\/p>

This helps students to see all of Brent\u2019s story first.\u00a0 They see the change that happens to him in one big chunk instead of going back and forth between Brent\u2019s story and the vignettes.\u00a0 However, the novel ends with Brent\u2019s story, on a high note, with joy.\u00a0 You miss out on that when you read Brent\u2019s story first.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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3. Read the vignettes out of order.<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Read Brent\u2019s story in order, but when you get to him building a whirligig in Washington, you then read the vignette from Washington.<\/span><\/p>

This was interesting to see how Brent views his whirligig and how other people see them.\u00a0 In one vignette, Florida, we find out that Brent\u2019s whirligig has been moved and no longer moves as a whirligig should.\u00a0 Brent mentions in his chapter that it might get damaged due to the hurricanes, but he makes peace with that.\u00a0 I always wonder if it was damaged and rescued and given a new life by moving it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think students would make those connections if they were to read the book in the order it was written.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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To sum up<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In the end, I like reading the book as it was intended.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve since had groups of students go back and read the novel in the other ways listed above (because it is so short) and share insights they have gained.<\/span><\/p>

I truly believe this book should have gotten more attention than it did.\u00a0 With the emphasis on Restorative Justice in schools, this is a novel that can help students learn that we are not our mistakes, but we do have to change and do something to make up for those mistakes.<\/span><\/p>

**These quotes were all chosen by students from the novel.\u00a0 You can <\/span>buy the set (and 10 more quote posters) in my TPT store.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Other Novels Worth Teaching<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Lines We Cross by Randa Abdel-Fattah <\/span>– Check out my blog post HERE.<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Shop this Post<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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*Contains affiliate links, so I do make a small commission if you purchase using this link.\u00a0 However, I only include links to the things I love, use in my own class, or books I have in my own classroom library.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Whirligig by Paul Fleischman definitely qualifies as a novel worth teaching. It is a slim, yet powerful, unassuming, yet life-changing, novel about mistakes, restitution, and forgiveness by others and of ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19],"tags":[32,27],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-secondary-language-arts","category-novels","tag-novels","tag-secondary-language-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1470,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/1470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}